U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will make a spacewalk on Wednesday in another attempt to install a power-switching unit on the International Space Station.
Last Thursday, NASA Flight Engineer Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Hoshide spent 8 hours and 17 minutes in the outer space, but failed to install a new Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on the station’s s-zero truss as they had difficulties driving the bolts to secure the equipment.
The MBSU is a heavy component that is used to relay power from the station’s solar arrays to its systems.
A spokesman for the Russian Mission Control said that “the opening of the outer hatches is scheduled for 15:50 Moscow time [11:50 GMT],” for the astronauts to begin the spacewalk.
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) said that Wednesday’s spacewalk is scheduled to last 6.5 hours.
“If by the 4-hour mark the spacewalkers are still unable to install the MBSU, they will begin the process of cleaning it up and bringing it back inside the Quest airlock for further analysis and troubleshooting within the pressurized, shirt-sleeve environment of the station,” NASA said in a statement.
Williams and Hoshide’s previous spacewalk was the third longest in history. The longest of 8 hours and 56 minutes was carried out by U.S. astronauts Susan Helms and James Voss in 2001.
